JANE’S HISTORY ABOUT ADDICTS AND ALCOHOLISM

In only three years of using illegal drugs, Jane, the privileged daughter of a wealthy businessman, was reduced to stealing and living in squats. Today, five years after coming off drugs, she has regained her health and happiness. Aged twenty-six, she is married with a

two-year-old daughter, Sophie. She runs her own dress shop.

Jane's use of drink and drugs started at the age of thirteen. She was expelled from boarding school for having a flask of gin under her school uniform, but despite this and a further expulsion from a second school, she managed to complete several O- and A-levels.

‘I had feelings of inadequacy from a very young age,' she remembers. 'I appeared full of confidence yet I was always seeking attention. I was always telling fibs, like saying I had two ponies at home when I didn't. I always wanted to be cool and to be in with the right gang.'

Her parents' marriage started slowly to break up when she was fourteen. 'It upset me a lot. If I had talked about it many of the bad feelings would have gone away. But I didn't discuss it with anyone. I was unable to express my feelings.'

Jane's drug-taking started at the age of eighteen when she left school and went to London. T was immediately attracted to the druggy set. I thought it was glamorous. It appealed to me because I thought it was terribly romantic. I wasn't friendly with the kind of responsible people who were doing secretarial courses.'

Three months after arriving in London, she had taken almost all the illegal drugs - starting with cannabis, then cocaine and heroin. 'The drugs gave me the ability not to care. I always said I didn't care, but I did. Heroin calmed me down.'

That autumn Jane fell in love with a young man at university and they started taking heroin together. After three months of using, however, her boyfriend decided he had had enough. 'I said I was going to give up too, and I did want to, but I couldn't. You know, I really do believe in the disease concept of addiction, because when I started drugs I plummeted like a stone.'

A few months later Jane began the search for something that would help her stop. She told her parents and they too began a series of rescue attempts. She had the black-box treatment twice-to no avail. She had psychoanalysis to help the underlying problems. She was put in a private psychiatric hospital in France for nine months. 'I picked up all the loony habits quickly. If things were dull, I would start throwing flowerpots and the other patients would imitate me. Then I'd be given a big injection of Largactil into my bottom. It used to make me dribble and make my tongue hang out.'

After that, Jane registered with a London hospital for methadone treatment and at one point her parents hired a series of private nurses to look after her at home. 'My parents paid my debts, bought me new clothes, sent me on holidays, and then sent me to New York. It was meant to be a new life with a new flat.'

In New York she overdosed on PCP and had two cardiac arrests. Her father had to fly out to her, not knowing if she would be alive or dead on his arrival. 'He told me later he was so desperate about me that after yet another terrible phone call about me he knelt down on the office floor and begged God to let me die.'

Then Jane's parents were advised to stop trying to rescue her. While she was living at home and using drugs, her mother called the police. 'They busted me in her house. She had to do it to protect my younger brother, who was also living there.'

Without her parents' care, she got rapidly worse. 'I was dossing anywhere and it didn't matter who with. I had stolen from my parents and I'd done a bit of minor burglary from friends. I was so bad, I would sit in the bath with cold water. I'd have a couple of grams of cocaine and overdose. Then I'd come round and immediately reach for the syringe and start again. The cold water was to bring me round for another shot.'

Finally she was put into hospital under the mental-health laws as a 'danger to her own life'. Her parents visited her there with a GP who knew of a clinic whose treatment philosophy was compatible with the programme of Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous. For a year Jane was treated first in the clinic itself, then in a halfway house nearby. T was so crazy and my brain was so fuddled I don't remember much about it at first. I never felt like walking out and I never had severe cravings. I was beyond all that.

'I think I responded to the straight talk I got from my counsellor. I don't take much notice of subtlety. I'm straight up and I like people who are straight up with me. The no-bullshit approach was a good tactic with me.'

When she first moved into the halfway house, Jane started going to Narcotics Anonymous meetings every day. 'I wanted to be in with the right set, but this time it was the right set. I had no other friends left.

'At first all I wanted was to be a cook at the clinic, and then get well enough to be a counsellor myself. I gave it my life, my soul, my everything. I loved it there. I also had a lot of fear and terror about going back to London.'

When Jane did move back to London she shared a flat with a non-drug-using girlfriend. She did the secretarial course she had once despised. Then she met Andrew, the young businessman who is now her husband. 'At first he questioned my continued attendance at NA and the fact that I must not drink. But I wouldn't budge. I said: "NA is first. Not you." It was a big challenge for him, and anyway, he likes difficult women!'

A year later, when they married, Andrew had gone to NA meetings with Jane and had come to admire the recovering addicts for the way they helped each other and those still using drugs. He had also gone to Families Anonymous meetings, where the families of addicts support each other.

Nowadays, Jane's life is a full one: she has a child and her own fashion shop. Yet she is still committed to Narcotics Anonymous. 'In the first year of recovery I was obsessive about being a recovering addict, but this programme is a path to normal living and now I lead what I think is a thoroughly normal life.'

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